Mary is the reason you'll find me caroling on the cancer floor on Christma Eve
The hall is dark and quiet. It was Christmas Eve. The daytime buzz–phones ringing, doctors consulting, and nurses bustling from room to room–was gone. The hall was dead quiet. Because this was a cancer and hospice unit on Christmas Eve. The December stream of well wishers and visitors dried up like the kalahari desert.
Outside of the hospital, families lit candles at darkened church service, friends passed the plate of cookies at the Christmas party, or applauded at the holiday concert. The only sound here was the electronic beeping of the IV machines.
After working the dayshift, I sneaked back in a vintage Santa suit, a find from a thrift store to surprise Mary. Her bald head announced her fight with cancer and her booming laugh made me fall in love with her fiery spark. As a nurse, I loved all my patients, but Mary’s mischievous glint roped me in close. I couldn’t imagine this sparkplug of a lady being surrounded by silence in a room all by herself on Christmas Eve. I’d find my new fiance, and surprise him, too, as he worked the overnight shift as a new resident. But really, I was here for Mary.
Belting out, “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing!” I burst into her room. Squealing, her arms flapped like she was a duck trying to take off from the lake. “It’s you!” she crooned and wrapped her arms around me like a quilt. I knew that a five-foot tall, 23-year-old caroling nurse in a Santa suit wasn’t with who she most wanted to celebrate Christmas Eve; that was her family. But as we sat on the edge of her bed together, I knew that at least she wasn’t alone on this night.
Now, I shuffle my two sons up the hospital stairwell to that same cancer/hospice unit on Christmas Eve. Candy canes dangle off their mittened hands and a Santa hat droops over one of their miniature heads. Some rooms are hospice rooms, the only sound is labored breathing. The time of talking to their loved one is past, and family members only sit in silent presence now. Other rooms are for cancer patients, one family member sitting in a worried vigil. Or sometimes, a cancer patient like Mary, is all alone.
“Anything we can sing for you tonight?” we ask as we squish our winter jackets through the small doorway.
“Oh. How about a silent night?” the patient lying in the bed whispers.
As our choir of 4 and a few recruited friends start to sing, the air becomes suspended around us. Eyes glisten over and hands find their way to the patient in the bed with a shared squeeze. This Christmas carol is conjuring something magical into the room. Maybe beautiful memories once shared with the patient in the bed, or ones celebrated with their own children long past, or even sparkling moments of Christmas wonder as a child? That first bike, or red sled, or barbie doll under the tree. I’ll never know these magical memories that launch tears rolling down cheeks like bobsleds, or bloom smiles under the fluorescent hospital lighting, or cause laughter to bubble over as we squeeze into a hospital room on Christmas Eve and sing these carols.
“Do ‘Oh Holy Night’ next, that's her favorite!” We've moved into the next room and the patient’s daughter smiles as we gather around her mother’s hospice bed. Our reedy voices break into the silence as we string the words together. We get brave enough to turn up the off-tune volume so she can hear it. Half way through the song, her daughter exclaims, “Her lips are moving, do you see that! Mom’s singing, `Oh holy night’!”
This Christmas carol reached past what looked possible, and ignited something that moved a dying mother’s lips to sing a Christmas carol with her daughter. I’ll never forget it.
Christmas carols connect the dying to deeply woven memories, stitching together across childhood or the patchwork of parenthood that allow us to rekindle some of our brightest memories at the end.
Music is mysterious and powerful. It connects us to moments and experiences we hold across our lifetimes. Now, when I hear a Christmas carol walking through a store, I remember those darkened hospital rooms on Christmas Eve night. The melody of ‘Silent Night,’ conjuring into the room memories that made the most weary people rejoice.
The Santa suit is long gone, but I still find my feet padding through the snow, returning to the hospital on Christmas Eve night. My sons grew from toddling into rooms offering candy canes, into teenagers who aren’t intimidated by the gray linoleum and the sick patient swallowed up in the middle of the hospital bed. I think about how it all started, Mary’s bellowing laugh and mischievous smile, and sometimes I wonder, Mary did you know?